About Volunteering

Monday, 11 March 2013

New KUSU Volunteer Coordinator says Hi!

Abbie Hurrell - Volunteer Coordinator (Schools and Community)

Hi
my name is Abbie Hurrell and I am the new Volunteer Coordinator (Community and
Schools) for KUSU Volunteering. I work alongside the lovely Jemma
Houghton who is your other Volunteer Coordinator (Jemma looks after One-Off and Student-Led
Volunteering).

I
started this job in mid February, coming from a background of Volunteer
Brokerage having worked with the Volunteering Richmond and Volunteering
Wandsworth Volunteer Services. I absolutely love volunteering; it keeps
you busy, makes you appreciate life, makes you feel fantastic about helping
others and is a brilliant way to meet other people! Volunteering is also
hugely important in increasing graduate employability, with most employers now
seeing experience as the key attribute in a job candidate. Previously I
have volunteered with animal charities, schools, the elderly and with children
with disabilities; I even spent 3 months living and volunteering in
Italy.

Although
I’ve only been here a month I have already registered lots of volunteers and
had the pleasure of meeting lots of enthusiastic and energetic KU
students. It has been hugely rewarding to see some of you choose a
volunteer opportunity and begin volunteering in such a short space of time – so
thank you to everyone I’ve seen so far!

Community
Volunteering is also starting to really expand in terms of the
opportunities we are offering, with Action Tutoring, Missing People and
Kingston Hospital all signing up to the service and eagerly awaiting some new
student volunteers to help with their work. I’ve also had loads of really
useful feedback from students on the kinds of volunteering you would like to do
on an ongoing basis – so continue to visit our Community Page as it gets
updated at the beginning of each month with new opportunities. If you have any
suggestions of other opportunities we could be offering, then let me know -
this is YOUR service!

Schools
Volunteering is currently not open as we had such a huge intake at the
beginning of the year that we don’t have any space left in our schools for more
students. Don’t worry though! We are in the process of contacting lots of
schools in the area, so hopefully we will have some new opportunities for you
soon.

This
month we are beginning to prepare for our annual Volunteer Awards Ceremony –
which is something I am really excited to be a part of. It will be a great
opportunity to meet you all, and also to shout out to the Kingston community
about all the good volunteering that our students are doing.

If
you have any questions about Community and Schools Volunteering then please
contact me, or if you’re already currently volunteering then please send me a
message and let me know how it’s going – I’d love to hear from you!

Finally,
thank you for being so welcoming and I am Iooking forward to helping you all
get more involved in volunteering in the future!

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Volunteering is the official volunteering service for current Kingston University Students and Staff. This blog is for volunteers to show off all the great stuff they get up to and for our Volunteering Coordinators to share all the latest volunteering news.